The Road of Life
by December Writing Dragon
Summary: As a doctor with the Red Cross, Alfred's work has tempered his heart and soul since the start of World War II. Stationed at the Eastern Front, he is able to keep his own flame alight through the company of Ivan Braginsky, a major in the Red Army. But enemies exist on all sides, and many people have many reasons to not want these two together. RusAme oneshot.


**The Road of Life**

War made the air smell of rust. War made the air smell of gunpowder, iron, dust, salt, smoke. War made the air smell of death.

Healing the wounded made the air smell of death. And with those crippling odors of blood and burning came the moans of the war's victims, the pleas for an end to the pain, begging not to amputate a limb but please, oh please, let the pain stop.

Doctor Alfred Jones hated the sounds and smells of World War II, but the more he hated every strike against the senses, the more determined it made him. The Red Cross had gone to the Eastern Front to tend to the Red Army stationed outside the starving city of Leningrad, now almost completely encircled by the Axis. Only a strip of shoreline along Lake Ladoga remained in Soviet hands, and from that strip of land they had forged The Road of Life. Across the frozen lake trucks ferried civilians out of the dying city and carried supplies back in. The emaciated faces of the refugees fleeing across the lake fill Alfred with the same grim dread as the ripped up bodies of the soldiers throwing themselves at the Axis death machine. And with every bout of weariness on his soul, Alfred's determination grew to be a spot of light in these people's lives.

His own spot of light was the tall, lumbering major, Ivan Braginsky, whose entire frame seemed to fill the area where Alfred tended to patients.

Ivan always greeted Alfred, "Hello, Dr. Dzhones," in his heavy accent, with the same wave and salute. He never could get Alfred's last name quite right, and Alfred had no desire to correct the endearing faux pas.

Alfred always replied with a respectful nod and a, "Hello, Major."

Ivan was often in and out of the medical facilities. His decent understanding of English meant he could help translate, "So you do not hurt my men with bad Russian." He visited those men as they healed, before charging out himself to continue fighting the Axis. And, almost as often, Ivan could be found lying in one of the hospital beds with an injury of his own. Ivan was relentless in his efforts on the battlefront, barely healing before launching himself out of bed with a hurried, "Thank you, Dr. Dzhones," and off he went to resume his duties.

When Ivan was down long enough for him to get the chance, Alfred would reprimand him, demand he show a little more care for his own wellbeing.

And Ivan would smile an insufferably charming smile and say, "But I have you to patch me up again."

These and Ivan's other antics always managed to brighten Alfred's days of gloom and dread. Even injured- especially when injured- he would put on a little show for Alfred, testing his own endurance, "And making my job harder," Alfred was careful to note.

Ivan smiled, standing next to his bed, his leg heavily bandaged and in a cast.

"But don't you want to see a dance, Dr. Dzhones?"

"I want to see you actually following your doctor's orders."

Alfred was ignored; Ivan, holding heavily to the bedrail, swayed clumsily, trying to switch from his right to his left and wincing through a wavering spin that nearly sent him tumbling to the ground.

"Alright, Major. Time to rest."

"No, no, wait!" Ivan's broad shoulders rose and fell as he fought determinedly through more pained moves. He was panting by the end of his botched performance, but when he finished, he looked to Alfred with an expectant smile.

"That was very inspired, Major."

At last, Ivan relaxed and clambered into bed. "I am going to do that dance over the corpse of the next fascist I slay." It was an combination, the broad smile and wide innocent eyes coupled with the ominous promise. But Ivan was an amusing oddity that Alfred rejoiced in getting to see.

Time passed, and their routine continued, each managing to bring a smile to the other faces even if for a few hours, while the shadow of war hung thick around them.

One day, Ivan was brought in with a bad wound to the chest. His uniform was in wet crimson tatters; the cap he wore clutched feebly in his hands now sporting a visible rip. His skin was chalky white, breathing ragged, face twisted; morphine was in limited supply. The Red Army reserved it for most imminent of emergencies, and even Alfred had to be careful when to use it.

Morphine for Ivan would have been morphine for Alfred. Each broken gasp and choked moan from Ivan was like a bullet to Alfred's heart, the deadly metal burrowing deeper and deeper into his chest until Alfred's entire existence was summed up by Ivan's pain.

The surgery was a success. Ivan looked wane but in good spirits- and asked for some "good spirits" to help him recover faster. Alfred had answered only with a look. Later, when Ivan tried to drag himself to the bathroom, Alfred reminded Ivan he was still supposed to not exert himself, lest he start bleeding again.

Ivan continued trying to amuse Alfred from his bed. His spirits remained lifted, but his body worked at its own devices.

Ivan's wound proved to be infected. Ivan broke into a fever, his temperature rising every night, until one evening he was 104°F. The figure in his bed was hardly the major Alfred had come to care for so. This man had chapped lips, a thinned chest that sucked in shallow breaths, disheveled hair that hung in sweaty mats around his face. Ivan stank of the same odor permeating the facility, permeating the war.

The cracked lips parted. "Do you want to see a dance, Dr. Dzhones?" The voice that sounded was like listening to sandpaper scrape across wood.

Alfred managed a tremulous smile as he shook his head. "Not tonight, Major. YOU'RE not going anywhere." Not on his watch.

The brief silence between them was filled with Ivan's ragged breathing.

"Then...take me somewhere."

"Wh-what?"

More spreading breaths. "Tell me about America. Tell me about a land the fascists are not tainting, where they are nowhere to be found. A place…" A horribly wet cough. "A place away from these bombs."

Feeling ice fill his insides, Alfred could barely keep his voice level as he tells his patient, his major, his Ivan, about America, about the bustle of New York, the open skies, the long summers, the air free of gunpowder.

"And you're there," Ivan muttered blearily.

"Mmhmm." Alfred doesn't trust himself to speak beyond that. But, Sterling himself, he leans down and presses a cold compress to Ivan's forehead. "You can see it if you get better. I'll show you- but only if you get better. D...doctor's orders."

Not entirely understanding everything, but able to remember that Alfred's voice was a vessel of comfort, Ivan gave a faint nod. "Yes, Dr. Dzhones."

And he did. The fever broke, and although he was not completely recovered, Ivan's smile was gloating when he told Alfred, "Now you have to show me New York."

Alfred was stunned Ivan remembered that conf, processed it, but was too happy to argue. When this war was over, they would figure something out. Their countries were allies in this fight. There would be some plan arranged to show Ivan around. And with thought tugging a smile onto his lips, Alfred discharged Ivan so they could both continue their work.

Days later, Alfred was asked to sign a death certificate. He had to sign an unfortunately high amount over the course of his work. The eastern front was a place of loss, and soldiers and civilians alike has fallen victim to the Axis. It does not even fully sink in until Alfred slowly processes the name on the paper.

How, he demands to know, voice sounding distant to his own ears. But just as importantly: "Wh...where's the body?"

The soldiers exchange a grim look. In heavily accented English, the one says, "You don't want to see what's left of him. German air bombing struck his truck on the lake, blasted a hole in the ice. What remains of him is down in the water."

The one who had explained everything to Alfred, it transpired, would be the new major to translate for Alfred and his men. He even wore a cap with the same nick in the visor as Ivan's. Alfred couldn't look him in the face.

Alfred's own spot of light had been extinguished- snuffed out in a whirl of shrapnel and smothered beneath the icy water of Lake Ladoga- and so too had his eternal smile. Patients were not subject to his stubborn optimism; instead, every day became about simply doing his job: healing the cannon fodder so it could resume its suicidal purpose in life. Alfred now knew a deep resentment for the higher-ups, those who had aligned all the pieces just so, whose decisions had let Ivan be just another bout of target practice for the Germans.

It was a gradual process, but with each passing day, more and more Alfred offered himself up as target practice. He became more bold, or at least less caring. He shunted the safety of his medical facilities in favor of a field hospital. Now, he no longer needed to be near the wounded and weeping to smell the tang of death. It soiled every breath.

 _Tell me about America_.

It bled into the earth.

 _Tell me about a land the fascists are not tainting, where they are nowhere to be found_.

It ran from Alfred's eyes down frozen cheeks.

 _Yes, doctor_.

Alfred eventually becomes able to fall asleep to the sounds of explosions, the rapid fire of machine guns, the distant quaking of mortars going off. The Germans send Alfred the dying, and Alfred sends them the living.

And one day, as a truck drives across the Road of Life, an explosion sends it careening off its wheels as broken ice and water spray everywhere. Alfred runs with the other doctors over the ice and, in his haste crashes down. His eyes are now locked with the frozen water, and all the world comes screaming to an agonizing halt as Alfred presses his numb hands against the ice, reaching across the world, across war, across life and death, to where Ivan was resting alone, without his doctor to heal him. And Alfred's broken voice did not waver Death's sure resolve.

0o0o0

Alfred awoke in the cold of his field tent to the feel of someone hands at his shoulders. He cringed away from the urgent shaking, blinking sleep from his eyes, vision remaining stubbornly blurry.

But he did not need his glasses to recognize the figure over him. No amount of time could make him process the sight, though.

Ivan was a beaten, bloody, and bruised, eyes shadowed and cheeks hollow. But it was unmistakably his voice that spoke from the cracked and bleeding lips.

"Help me, Dr. Dzhones."

NKVD agents had heard his talks with Alfred, had been documenting their friendship. And after he has been dismissed from the hospital, they arrested him. Ivan had used every type of combat and stealth to pass through unfriendly eyes, and pulled from reserves of respect to turn the heads of those who cared for him- all to get himself back to Alfred.

The dying world came to a screaming halt as Alfred spent a lifetime understanding. But when the throes of war continued, he knew what he had to do.

"Let's get you taken care of, Major."

THE END

Historical and Author's Notes:

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Axis forces surrounded and blockaded the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg); this became known as the Siege of Leningrad. The Soviets took control of parts of the shore of Lake Ladoga, and across that lake was The Road of Life; during the winter this included a pathway across the frozen ice for civilians to leave and supplies to come in. After the thaw, barges performed these tasks. And throughout the siege, lasting almost 900 days, the Germans fired at the road.

NKVD is essentially pre-KGB.

Thank you for reading. If you have a moment, please review to let me know what you thought! Reviews keep the authors writing!


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